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The Implicit Rectitude of the Jackal

Jackals are the WORST.

They are cowardly opportunistic scavengers and, frankly, that was our gig. It’s natural to feel some professional jealousy towards something so much like us. “Jackal” is even used as a slur against someone if they are a character in an Italian gladiator movie. They have a worse reputation than even the coyote… which is a little odd because they are essentially the same animal. But, existence has a way of balancing out: Bad reputation, now; essentially worshiped in ancient times.

Maybe “worshiped” is too strong a word. Maybe it isn’t even a word at all… I didn’t look it up. But, I do know that the Egyptian god, Anubis, was a jackal from the neck up. If he’d also been a jackal from the neck down, he’d just be a dog. I doubt any civilization would accept a dog as their god of embalming; but, a man with a dog’s head is something that I personally could get behind…

Since just after the time of the Pharaohs, the number of groups that have worshiped jackals has dropped off sharply; but, even fewer have worshiped fruit flies and ducks, so jackals still have a little further to fall. I’d say that the only religion to still pay any lip service to the jackal are the Presbyterians during “Jackal Week”… less a festival to honor the jackal and more an excuse for eating pie and ice cream.

To fall so far in public opinion might be devastating to a Gary Coleman or a Robert Blake, but jackals are made of sterner stuff. As I implied above, jackals are classified as “opportunistic omnivores”. This means, they only eat things that are possible to eat. Sure, the term means nothing to us, but it is the kind of subtly nuanced concept that separates zoologists from those of us with real jobs…

Jackals tend to hang out in monogamous pairs. They mark their territory in the same disgusting way most animals do. If another jackal does encroach, the initial pair make themselves total assholes until it leaves. The prey of the jackal are mostly small and harmless, unless it is a Black-backed Jackal (as I will discuss later, unless you are reading this backwards, of course): Mice, rats, lizards, even fruits such as olives are mainstays of the jackal diet. And, if the occasional animal drops dead and predators leave a few choice bites, who is the jackal to complain?

As I stated above, the jackal is a monogamous animal. This can be traced back to the difficulty in finding a mate when your breath smells of rotten meat and olives. The male spends his free time chasing off intruding male jackals who might be up to no good. The females chase away intruding females. If a hermaphrodite jackal intrudes, they flip a coin. Jackals have litter sizes that average five pups which may not seem like much, but it’s more jackals than you’ll ever give birth to.

There are three jackal species. The heaviest is the Golden Jackal, although the Side-striped Jackal looks heavier due to horizontal racing stripe on either side. Golden Jackals think that they are, in fact, all that, due to their impressive golden coat. I’m inclined to agree. They tend to eat a lot of fruit with their small mammals, insects, eggs and carrion. So, if a pride of lions has killed a watermelon, eaten their fill and wandered away, the Golden Jackal is all over that. Sometimes, they manage to kill their own watermelons… even watermelons twice their size.

Actually, I was kidding about the lions. Golden Jackals hang out in Asia so the only watermelon-eating carnivores a Golden Jackal could rely upon would be a pride of tigers… and tigers HAVE NO PRIDE.

There are several subspecies of Golden Jackal. For those of you too stupid to look it up, a subspecies contains animals that can breed AND conceive young that are non-sterile. Let me repeat that: Senate Bill 17 must never reach the floor of the House of Representatives. A lot of animals can have sexual relations and cannot conceive. If we didn’t include the last part of the definition, cattle and some teen-age boys I knew growing up in West Texas would both be subspecies of the bovine family…

The Common Jackal got stuck with the worst jackal name ever. It is the nominate subspecies of the Golden Jackal. This means that it was originally considered the entire species until zoologists looked around and saw a rainbow of different jackal types, each more different than the previous. The common jackal looks like a effeminate wolf.

The Siamese Jackal might be its own subspecies or just a stunted Indian Jackal. Indian Jackals are pretty cool so it wouldn’t be bad to be one. They’ve been known to follow tigers around, waiting for them to kill something and eat their fill; then, the indian jackal eats the leftovers. They’ve even been known to narc on potential prey for the tigers AND to take a few bites while the tigers feed. They can be recognized by their black and white fur, white legs and balls of steel…

The largest subspecies of the Golden Jackal is the European Jackal. It’s pelt is long with a pleasing red-chestnut hue. It eats small creatures and occasionally eats pears like a common Frenchman. You mostly find them around the Balkan states. Their population has thinned considerably because they were found around the Balkan states. Apparently they are tough guys around rabbits and lizards but when it comes to a little poison, they are, in fact, wimps…

The least interesting species of jackal is the Side-striped Jackal. It is an African species that lives in wooded areas due to the fact that other species of jackal kicked them out of the hunting grounds. They lean more towards vegetarianism than meat-eating, although they wouldn’t turn down a nice rotting corpse. There are about seven recognized subspecies of side-striped jackal; but, even as dogs, they are a disappointment.

The Black-backed Jackal is the psycho stripper girlfriend of the jackal world. Sure, they’ll eat carrion; but, they also actively create their own. Like a psycho stripper girlfriend, they can take down an animal twice their size. A single 25 pound black-backed jackal can take down a healthy gazelle or goat. They are the oldest species of jackal and the ones most capable of representing. Their ranges are huge… one in Southern Africa and the other in Saharan Africa. They are the reason side-striped jackals live in the woods…

As I said, jackals are the worst; however, they aren’t going anywhere. The more we use poison, guns and traps to get rid of them, the more they learn to avoid poison, hunters and traps. Any animal smart enough to knock over a garbage can will no problem living in uneasy harmony with the human race. We may not like them, but we are stuck with these little caricatures of ourselves in dog form…